She swam calmly, smiling, graceful, voluptuous and chaste. It was not a woman, it was Amphitrite, the goddess of the sea, daughter of Nereus and Doris. The Ocean seemed to be her domain, so comfortable was she; she did not obey the waves, it was they who obeyed her and rocked her according to her desires. At times she would turn around on her back, lay all the way down on the wave, fold her hands under her head and let herself be swayed by the flow. At other times she enjoyed beating the sea and, then, the phosphorescence increased around her, the sparkle of the waves increased by friction and each of her blows produced jets of light, here weak, there shining. Sometimes, on the contrary, a shadow was created around her, and it was her body that seemed to light up: electric sparks, reddish
